


Recomplete

by Perosha



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Friendship/Love, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:15:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perosha/pseuds/Perosha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Dream Drop Distance] A quiet moment between Aeleus and Ienzo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recomplete

Aeleus touched a knuckle to the windowpane, watching midnight deepen over the shreds of Radiant Garden. In The World That Never Was night had been eternal, and often starless with cloud, so that above the neon aura of the ghostly city there had always risen to his window a blackness that had seemed alive in its intensity—not merely the absence of light, but something that willfully pressed itself against the panes. Now, having seen night fall twice since recompleting, Aeleus thought the darkness here was different. Thinner and weaker, somehow, or less aggressive. But he couldn't be certain of such a strange feeling.

There wasn't much he could be certain of, really.

So tired was he that he didn't hear the footsteps until they were at the door. The sound made him look over his shoulder, knowing already from the weight of the steps who had come to find him. Ienzo did not enter at once. Instead he stuck his head through the half-open door, as if uncertain of what he would find behind it.

“Aeleus. You're still awake?”

He seemed to take this fact as permission to enter, and the door groaned on its rusty hinges as it swung closed behind him. He had removed his lab coat, and the cravat he'd acquired hung loose at his throat, as if he'd decided halfway through untying it that it wasn't worth the effort. The weak lamplight deepened the dark smudge under his one visible eye, but if he was as weary as Aeleus felt, he didn't act it. In fact he looked gently pleased.

“I had hoped you weren't asleep yet.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? No, not that I'm aware of. I've been in the library.” As always he had a book, but this was a small, worn paperback, quite unlike the heavier volumes of reference and research that he usually carried. “I found this just now. Improperly shelved, to boot. I thought perhaps you might want it.”

Aeleus's brow furrowed when Ienzo handed him the unassuming little book, and he turned it over, running a knuckle along its threadbare spine.

“What is it?”

“You don't recognize it?”

The book felt small and soft in his hands, and it took flipping through it twice before the shape and weight of it began to stir some memory long buried. Again he flipped through it, and gradually it dawned why certain pages were carefully dog-eared to more easily find the particular poem they held. He hadn't written his name in it anywhere, but nonetheless...

“Odd, isn't it?” Ienzo said. “There doesn't seem to be any logic to what endured and what didn't. I haven't found any items of my own yet, but I know Dilan discovered one of his skillets in the kitchens this morning. If I come across any more of your books, I’ll bring them up.”

“Thank you.”

Aeleus did not feel like reading at the moment. He set the paperback on the windowsill, its pages stirring when a cool night breeze seeped through the bottom of the leaky window, which rattled feebly in its warped pane. One more thing that needed fixing.

He expected Ienzo to leave, but instead Ienzo sighed and brushed at the front of his vest, then sat down on the edge of the bare mattress, making it creak. Aeleus sat down too, and beneath his weight the mattress sank much more heavily.

“How are you holding up?” Ienzo asked him.

Aeleus said nothing, but Ienzo gave a clipped sigh and plucked at his cravat.

“You’re right, of course,” he said matter-of-factly, as if Aeleus had replied. “It’s a silly question.”

Together they gazed out of the window, watching a handful of lights flicker in the town far below. Before, house lights had carpeted the view from the castle nearly to the horizon, a field of shimmering stars that mirrored the real ones above; now there were only a few tentative glimmers from the small settlement in the leeward side of the castle that was cobbling itself together from the remains of what had once been the oldest part of town. All the rest of it, they’d discovered, had gone.

Silences had lost their solace, Aeleus thought wearily. There was too much in them now, not words but other things that he couldn't quite catch hold of, a cascade of thoughts and feelings that he was suddenly obliged to find room for. Being whole was like putting on a long-lost garment to find it didn’t fit quite as well as it used to.

Tiredly, Aeleus realized he needed to shave. He’d done it this morning, but already a shadow had crept across his jaw, and the itch of it made him rub the side of his neck tenderly, feeling the little pinpricks of his coarse stubble.

“Aeleus? What are you thinking about?”

Aeleus exhaled through his nose. He did not look at Ienzo directly, instead watching their faint reflections in the dark glass of the window.

“I've been trying to remember my family,” he admitted. “What they were all like. My mother, my sisters. I can’t. At least, not well.”

Ienzo touched the loosened cravat at his throat, then let his hand fall. He'd had the necktie for only two days, but stroking it absently had already become a habit.

“If it's any consolation, I don't remember my family at all,” he said. “Though I doubt that’s anything to do with recompleting. I’m almost certain I forgot their faces before we ever...”

He trailed off, and off of Aeleus’s look, shook his head lightly, making the long side of his bangs sway.

“It doesn't bother me, Aeleus. If anything, it's to be expected. I was quite young.”

He left it at that, and Aeleus did not pick up the subject.

Outside, far below, the lights in the ruined town trembled like flowers in a breeze, far more of them visible at this hour than there ought to have been. Some kind of survival instinct, perhaps, for the settlers to cling to light so tightly. The stars above outnumbered the yellow lights below by a wide margin, and Aeleus realized that never in the past had he been able to see so much detail in the heavens above Radiant Garden. The city had been so large and bright before that only the worlds with the strongest hearts could shine upon it at night. Now the night sky was like a milky river, diamond-strewn, unrecognizable in its beauty.

Ienzo leaned against him.

Zexion had done this too. Rarely, very rarely, when they were alone, and never had it been an affectionate gesture—more a territorial one, Zexion using him as a piece of furniture, the way a cat did when it was haughtily sure it owned the much larger creature pinned beneath it. Now Ienzo rested against Aeleus's side, and though he could not lean his head on the much taller man’s shoulder, he settled for pressing his temple to Aeleus’s upper arm. When he closed his eyes, exhaustion drew new lines on his youthful face. Aeleus put an arm around him.

“Do you remember when we first formed the Organization?” Ienzo finally sounded tired. “It seems so long ago, doesn't it?”

Long, long ago, and yet only recently, somehow. The empty years between Aeleus of old and the other morning had compressed themselves into a long and monotonous fog, and trying to reach for what Lexaeus had been was like rummaging clumsily in the dark for objects whose shape had changed.

“I remember the first mission I ever went on.” His tone was thoughtful, and only that; Aeleus could hear no bitterness in it. “I was sent to explore Never Land when we first found it. You followed me, against orders. Do you recall?” He shifted position to more easily look up at Aeleus, though his head stayed leaned against to Aeleus’s arm. “Why did you do that, incidentally? I don’t think I ever asked.”

Only faintly could Aeleus recall the incident, but yes, the memory was there. He hadn’t felt anything then, not really, but there had been some motivating reason, some kernel of something inside him...

“Why did I follow you?” He reflected. “Because you were small.”

Ienzo sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with one hand, then let it fall into his lap. It closed into a weak fist, as if he were trying to fight his own exhaustion, and Aeleus said nothing, letting him rest. Outside, the moon peered at them uncertainly from behind a tattered cloud, and Aeleus nearly thought Ienzo had fallen asleep before he spoke again.

“Do you think he'll find the others?” he muttered. “Lea.”

Aeleus’s features tightened, but he said nothing. He did not look at Ienzo, not even at his reflection; he didn’t know what emotion he might find there. Instead he moved the arm around Ienzo’s side up onto his back, pressing a calloused thumb between his shoulder blades, rubbing gently. Ienzo melted against him, murmuring something that Aeleus could not catch.

Talking now, always talking. But a long day of relentless humanity had worn him down.

“I never actually planned for this,” Ienzo admitted, eyes closed. “Being...someone. It seemed improbable to hope for, after all this time.”

Aeleus had made no plans either, dared not harbor any secret fantasies of what it might be like to be again. And yet, here they were. Tired, and lost too, if Aeleus was honest with himself. It was disconcerting, not knowing what life might bring—like standing on the edge of a cliffside, peering over, gauging the distance.

 _Life._ Such a strong, strange word. They had lives again.

“Aeleus?”

“Mm?”

“What do you suppose...we should do now?”

Aeleus had no answer, nor did he think Ienzo really expected one. Ienzo sighed, and Aeleus kept silently rubbing his back, watching the shivering stars.


End file.
